Long a favorite on dance floors in Latin America, the porro, cumbia, and vallenato styles that make up Colombia’s música tropical are now enjoying international success. How did this music—which has its roots in a black, marginal region of the country—manage, from the 1940s onward, to become so popular in a nation that had prided itself on its white heritage? Peter Wade explores the history of música tropical, analyzing its rise in the context of the development of the broadcast media, rapid urbanization, and regional struggles for power. Using archival sources and oral histories, Wade shows how big band renditions of cumbia and porro in the 1940s and 1950s suggested both old traditions and new liberties, especially for women, speaking to a deeply rooted image of black music as sensuous. Recently, nostalgic, "whitened" versions of música tropical have gained popularity as part of government-sponsored multiculturalism.

Wade’s fresh look at the way music transforms and is transformed by ideologies of race, nation, sexuality, tradition, and modernity is the first book-length study of Colombian popular music.

PrefaceA Note on Recorded Music 1. Introduction 1National Identity Race and Nation Nation, Gender, Race, and Sexuality Music, Identity, and Music Capitalism 2. La Costa and Música Costeña in the Colombian Nation The Colombian Nation La Costa in the Nation The Identity of La Costa Colombian Popular Music and Costeño Music 3. Origin Myths: The Historiography of Costeño Music Cultural Dynamics in the Nineteenth Century Porro Cumbia Vallenato Conclusion 4. Music, Class, and Race in La Costa, 1930-1950 Class in Barranquilla, 1920s-1940s Changes in Music, 1920s-1940s Music, Class, and Race in La Costa 5. (Alegría! Costeño Music Hits the Heartland, 1940-1950 Bogotá and Medelln before Costeño Music The Beginnings of Costeño Music in the Colombian Interior Costeño Music: Reaction and Counterreaction Conclusion 6. The Golden Era of Costeño MusicCand After "Al Ritmo Paisa": The Recording Industry Changes in Costeño Music, 1950-1980 Conclusion 7. Costeños and Costeño Music in the Interior: Rejection and Adaptation, 1950s-1980s Bogotá: Resistance Medellín: "More Costeño than La Costa"? The Costeños in Bogotá and Medellín Ownership, Embodiment, and Identity 8. Multiculturalism and Nostalgia: The 1990s Patterns of Consumption in the 1990s Reviving Old Costeño Music Costeño Music and Costeño Identity A "Multicultural" Nation Conclusion 9. Conclusion: Writing about Colombian Music Appendix A: List of Interviewees Appendix B: Musical Examples Notes References Cited Index

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